‘WE SEE THE BATTLE AHEAD OF US’
How restaurants in the state are coping amid ‘disastrous’ staff shortages
Chris Hickey is planning to open a restaurant in Norwalk in about a month, but he has no idea how he’s going to staff it.
“We see the battle ahead of us,” he said. “We already know from the loss of staff and trying to bring people back who have gone other avenues, we just know we have a hill to climb ahead of us.”
Hickey is co-owner of several area restaurants,
The Spread in Norwalk, El Segundo in Norwalk and New Haven and, in a few weeks, a pizza place they’re calling the Magic Five Pie Company.
In all of those restaurants, staff both in and out of the kitchen have been difficult to find since indoor dining reopened in Connecticut.
“It’s not that I can blame them. If they finally had the time on their hands to pursue something that was a
dream in their head before, then God bless them,” Hickey said. “I really hope that some of them found something they just didn't have the time to pursue beforehand.”
Hickey isn’t alone. Restaurants across Connecticut are finding it nearly impossible to hire employees. Vincent Cappelletti called the situation “absolutely disastrous.”
Cappelletti, who owns Lucas Local Oyster Bar and Mission Salad in Southbury, and Centrico in Bethel, said they had to shut down for about six weeks starting on March 16, 2020. After that, staff became hard to find.
“I think there were a lot of restaurant employees that just said, ‘Maybe this is a good time to change my career,’” Cappelletti said. “We lost a lot of people in the industry simply because of the pause.”
Restaurants, Cappelletti said, are not always easy places to work, though he said every kitchen is different.
“The pause gave people a chance to think about it,” he said. “Maybe I want to drive for Amazon. Maybe I want to work at the hardware store. Totally understandable.”
According to Scott Dolch, executive director of the Connecticut Restaurant Association, staffing problems are industry-wide. He said it’s “the No. 1 challenge facing our industry,” and “it’s not going away.”
“Our average restaurant is between 65 and 70 percent of the staffing levels where they’d like to be,” he said. “Any restaurant you go into would hire a minimum of two to three people.”
Staffing issues have forced restaurant owners to shift business models. Cappelletti, for example, is also opening another restaurant in November — a New Orleans-style place called The Quarter in Newtown — though he said that expansion is “deceiving.”
“I decided I was going to renovate our old space, which gave us some more time to find some staff,” he said. “The restaurants are only open Wednesday through Sunday because we can't find enough staff to open for lunch Monday and Tuesday.”
Hickey has also had to cut back on the number of hours and days his restaurants
“I’m spending $1,500 to $2,000 a month just for ads to find people who are barely responding and not even showing up for interviews.”
are open.
“We don't even offer lunch anymore,” he said. “We’ve cut it down so that we’re open late afternoon now. That’s an entire shift that we don’t open, because we simply don’t have the hands that we need to run a lunch shift.”
Cappelletti said it’s not just the obvious — the hours and days they’re open — but every aspect of the business that has changed. Staffing has become more difficult to find, as costs have risen precipitously.
He’s looked at trimming the menu down, adjusting the way they take reservations, figured out how to make due with three servers instead of five.
“Going though this terrible time that we've all been through has made people rethink how we operate,” he said. “Every little thing.”
And much more resources, both time and money, are spent on finding staff. Hickey said their social media posts used to focus on the quality of the food, whereas now, “we’ve had to add into the cycle of posts the need for employees.”
“I’m spending $1,500 to $2,000 a month just for ads to find people who are barely responding and not even showing up for interviews,” Cappelletti said.
If those employees never come back, Dolch said he tells restaurants “there’s no light switch,” that it might take six months to a year of being understaffed.
Neither Hickey nor Cappelletti were optimistic.
“I’m not seeing any upticks,” Cappelletti said. Where he used to leave hiring primarily to his lower-level managers, he’s gotten much more directly involved.
“I’ve been pretty much calling every kitchen applicant from my cellphone,” he said.
Vincent Cappelletti, owner, Lucas Local Oyster Bar and Mission Salad in Southbury, and Centrico in Bethel